Thesis Summary on Anti-Semitism in
the Confederate South
Patrick O’Hare
In
coming back to my thesis topic and examining what I had already written in
History 209S, I tried to determine what the most fundamental aspects of my
paper were and to what extent I needed to broaden, focus, and/or refine them. Last
winter I had focused on the experiences of four Jewish-American individuals
living in the Confederacy or during Reconstruction with the goal of determining
how their Judaism (or lack thereof) affected their lives. While I hope to use
much of the research I did for that paper, moving closer to my thesis I have
found that I’m more interested in examining anti-Semitism specifically. Through
that lens I hope to find out more about the lives of poorer or more rural
Jewish southerners, as well as how reactions to Jewish individuals or even just
the idea of Judaism affected southern culture.
Similar
to my WIM paper, I plan to focus specifically on the South during the Civil War
and the few years before and after. By focusing both on Jewish southerners and
the Confederate society as a whole, I hope to discover how a self-proclaimed
nation founded on inequality and oppression considered one of its religious
minorities, as well as how that minority considered the nation.
Anti-Semitism in
the South, particularly in this period, is significant in that it shows how
discrimination and acceptance can be used by those in power to reward or
isolate individuals as well as entire groups. This thesis will add a layer of
complexity to the understanding of what role religious tension and
discrimination played in the United States as a whole and specifically during
societal confrontations of racial discrimination.
Source Wish List
- · Contemporary newspapers and/or speeches concerning Jewish-Americans in the South.
- · Legislation adopted by the Confederacy concerning Judaism or in response to anti-Semitic actions of Union forces like Grant’s General Order 11.
- · Data on religious demographics, immigration, or crimes against Jews during the war.
Source List
- · American Jewish History vol. 6, “Anti-Semitism in America.” Ed. Jeffery Gurlock
- · A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of anti-Semitism in America, by Frederic Jaher
- · Lincoln and the Jews, by Jonathan Sarna and Benjamin Shapell
It's great that your still on track with this project after you started thinking about it last winter. Do you think you'd consider focusing on specific individual's lives again for the thesis? I think that might give a nice narrative quality to it, but I also get that it can be harder to make a more general argument that way.
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